After Action Reports from The Front
The remaining Battletech Clan Invasion stuff came in, along with Car Wars 6th Edition and High Noon, an Old West skirmish game.
So, lots to keep me busy.
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The second shipment of Battletech stuff came with a challenge coin for Wolf’s Dragoons, a mech mercenary company that I was somewhat familiar with from the old days (1980s) of Battletech.
Or so I thought.
I had no idea how much of the Clan Invasion revolved around the Dragoons. And now that I know the full story (Clan recon!), I’m more intrigued with the Dragoons, especially after learning that Barnes & Noble has a preorder for a Wolf’s Dragoons Assault Star Force Pack.
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Car Wars 6th Edition is a welcome update of one of my favorite games from way back in the day. Autoduel remains one of the few computer games that I played all the way through.
Quite an ordeal getting my copy of the game, having the core box sit at a FedEx facility for almost 2 weeks, and then only a couple of days wait for the second shipment.
The game plays much like the original, without a lot of the bookkeeping since the cars are built from cards representing crew/gear/weapons/armor.
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High Noon is a fairly easy game to learn and play, as I was able to get through the rules and try a scenario within a couple hours of picking up the game. Game play is simplified compared to other similar games, but I’m a fan of Westerns, and game play feels somewhat cinematic, in the Western sense. I can’t wait until the Man With No Name inspired supplement comes out.
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Hoping to play these games with others soon, if not I’m content playing solitaire.
Five Parsecs From Home: I really need to get back into this one, the crew has yet to make planetfall on a new world. They had just escaped from a world that was undergoing a planetary invasion.
Stargrave: I’m probably not going to play this one anytime soon because it’s similarity to Five Parsecs From Home, and it’s more geared toward 2 players.
Marvel Crisis Protocol: Haven’t finished going over the rules, but at least I stopped printing/buying terrain.
Fire Team: newly released baby brother to the newest Kill Team release (huh?). It’s like how Blitz Bowl was for Blood Bowl, an ‘entry level’ self contained game.
Kill Team: the latest flavor of the month, rules have been read, miniatures painted, terrain prepped. Just need to find time to set up and play, which is not going to be soon because…
Battletech: Clan Invasion Kickstarter pledge is waiting to be picked up. That oughta keep me distracted for the next few days/weeks.
Black Ops: Need to do some painting: Russian soldiers, insurgents, and my own Black Ops team that I’m basing off The Unit TV show. Which means I gotta come up with some cool call signs for my 5-man team.
Gaslands Refueled: I have lots of slightly modified matchbox cars, plus templates and tokens, waiting to be played with.
Necromunda: all the above games have been keeping me busy with no time to delve back into this one, as much as I would love to do so.
And this list doesn’t even include the tabletop sports games that I’ve been neglecting.
I ordered a couple of sets of 28mm SAS fire teams for Osprey Games’ Black Ops tabletop game.
SAS with silenced weapons
SAS with bergens
They didn’t come with bases, so I went online to look for some, when I realized that I could just use my 3D printer.
I had some base files from last year, but decided to look online and found a file that had 12 – 25mm x 2mm bases, so I downloaded the file and printed the bases.
Here they are with the few British troops that I had from long ago.
So they’re a little shorter than the older minis.
Even with a couple more bases stacked under, they’re shorter. Ah well. Won’t matter that much on the battlefield I guess.
Here they are with some Taliban minis from long ago.
Since I’m still learning the rules, I’m using the option where you have 5 ‘mulligans’ to use in your Five Parsecs From Home campaign, and invoking this:
Pepsiman will not be in sickbay for 4 campaign turns.
Meanwhile, my crew will be escaping the planet with the new, improved 3D printed version of the Vulture.
Stand By!
I’m taking a plunge into a few skirmish-level games that have come out over the past few years, some of which I picked up some time ago, others I just picked up.
Necromunda
I don’t want to think of myself as a Games Workshop fanboy, since I’ve pretty much given up on keeping up with whatever version of Warhammer 40K is currently out there. Even Kill Team is less interesting to me. But Necromunda has always been an interesting game, both background and core rules, which plays much like earlier editions for 40K. This and Blood Bowl are the only two GW games that I’m planning on playing.
Marvel Crisis Protocol
If anything this scratches the itch for superhero gaming, more than the Marvel Champions card game does. There’s nothing wrong with the card game, I just bought too many supplements for it. For MCP I’m sticking to the core set and a handful of supplements that I find interesting. I’m probably not getting Thanos, for example.
Five Parsecs From Home
I had picked up the previous two versions of this game from the designer through Wargames Vault, and was about to embark on a campaign, when I found out the the 3rd edition was being put out by Modiphius, the game company that currently has the Star Trek and Dune RPG licenses. This has proven to be a fun one to play, a solo skirmish game, miniatures agnostic, which allows me to mix and match miniatures for my crew and adversaries from ones that I own, thought I bought minis for the next game that I’ll probably use for this one, too.
Stargrave
After watching a lot of review videos, I picked this one up, along with the miniatures sets, even though this one is also miniatures agnostic. Like 5PFH, this one involves creating a crew to run missions, though this one is designed to be played with at least 2 players, though I may have found a solution around that.
Hostile Tactical AI
This card set emulates an opponent in 2-player skirmish games, like all the ones listed above. I haven’t tried playing with it yet, but I hope to soon, with one of the games systems listed above, or possibly with Memoir ’44 and the Commands and Colors games in my collection.
I should have been posting after action reports here instead of just on Facebook.
Anyways, I sent the crew on the following assignments:
Mal found nothing while exploring, though he did get some alone time.
Ban and Jake acquired an auto rifle, which was given to Harry. They also received a quest rumor.
Pepsiman gained experience and raised his Combat Skill attribute.
Nick and Harry met up with the Vulture crew’s Patron, Bungo McJankeypants, who offered the following job:
Fight off a group of Abductor Raiders, who may have arrived ahead of a possible planetary invasion.
The crew were outnumbered 7-to6, but in the end the crew were victorious, but sustained casualties.
Pepsiman suffered a potential crippling injury, and will be in the ship’s sickbay for the next 4 campaign turns.
Mal suffered a serious injury, and will be in the ship’s sickbay for the next 2 campaign turns.
Nick suffered a minor injury, and will be in the ship’s sickbay for the next campaign turn.
The crew was well paid for the job, but found no loot in the area post battle. They also gained another quest rumor.
Oh, and the planet is about to be invaded. The crew is going to high tail it out of here in the next campaign turn.
There’s just too many miniatures out there. Period.
Though I did buy a few. As I do. But believe me when I say that after my first expansion choice, it took me a couple of days to decide to actually get others, and then decide which ones.
You can play with the core set as is, I just wanted a little variety. Plus, painting miniatures is fun.
I’ve played Marvel Champions maybe a half-dozen times, mostly with Spider-Man and Captain America.
I’ve played solo, and I have yet to play this with my gaming group.
I bought too many expansions which have yet to be played, so I stopped buying every expansion as it came out. That was the completionist in me.
When this game came out, another Marvel game came out as well, one that I was interested in but didn’t want to get into, because miniatures were involved, which is bad for my completionist tendencies.
